Essay

At the turn of the twentieth century there was a resurging impulse toward social and political reform. In some ways it continued tendencies already apparent since the industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century, in which...

Essay

Essay

Today, the Gilded Age evokes thoughts of “robber baron” industrialists, immigrants toiling long hours in factories for little pay, massive strikes that were often put down by force, and political corruption in both big cities...

Essay

The United States emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century as an industrial powerhouse, producing goods that then circulated around the world. People in distant countries used American-made clothes, shoes, textiles,...

Essay

In his April 2, 1917, war address, Woodrow Wilson cast the purpose of US involvement in World War I in broad, idealistic terms: the world, he declared, “must be made safe for democracy.” The First World War was a total war, requiring the complete mobilization of American society. The methods used to mobilize the manufacturing and agricultural sectors, select men for the military, regulate transportation, and distribute propaganda set precedents for how the federal government would respond to the crises of the Great Depression and World War II.

Essay

The word “movement” often designates a cultural shift of less import than the American Revolution, Great Depression, and other capitalized dramas in history. To be sure, some popular movements have gained broader recognition in the sweep of American...

Essay

No one seemed less well-cast for the role of reformer, in an age of reform, than Abraham Lincoln. To begin with, he was a stranger, emotionally and intellectually, to evangelical Christianity, the great engine of reform in the nineteenth century. Raised in...